Visionary Sound Arts Interface

MULTIDIMENSIONAL MUSIC Return to Main Page Return to Reviews Page Return To DarvReviews page These reviews are here displayed in the order which I, Darv Krizton,experienced them. This is the reverse order in which they originally appeared, since each new review was at the top of the column. You can still view the original column by clicking below: Click for original column The following is a recount of my impressions while exposing myself to the wondrous sounds of Jacotte Chollet's MultiDimensional Music. As stated at her website, i had a number of odd experiences using this music that few sound artists have been able to reliably produce. I am reserving the right to add new material to these reviews as i recall memories or feel i can clarify what has already been written. Renaissance Jacotte Chollet Click for Multidimensional Music dot com HOLY MOTHER/FATHER DIVINE!! THIS IS THE REAL THING!! After 2 years of going to her website and thinking about it, i finally acquired all 10 cd's from French visionary sound artist, Jacotte Chollet. This is some of the most intensely PHYSICAL and overtly HEALING synthesis i have had the pleasure of experiencing. I am not going to rush through these discs, but study and learn from them, so i will give you reviews as i assimilate each one's offered alignments. Multidimensional Music, as stated at the website, is designed to basically reset one's energy-body (the various energic sheaths, or"auric fields," along with other energetic structures and ultimately the physical structure itself to the original pattern of cosmic wholeness. Smirk if you will, but i tend to agree that that is what is happening here. Less than 30 seconds into listening to this first disc in the series, "Renaissance," i felt like i was coming on to an entheogen, complete with the initial anxiety and subsequent dilation of my personal consciousness. This first piece, "Liberte," features the adept use of swirling harp with sequenced synth and strings. At the same time i am feeling a strong, entheogen-like rush to a new level of awareness, i am feeling a deep aesthetic appreciation of this music: a really sweet production which reminds me of my favorite Jean Michel Jarre recordings. Classically beautiful, majestic and fully realized. Then, the Marcey-like harp strummings begin to entrain me into a blissful emotional reverie and so begins a graceful descent into a mid-theta state where i am already noticing very powerful healing energies and becoming less alert. This transition occurs relatively rapidly and by minute 6, my anxiety at the rapid change of state is completely gone. The harp swirlings become wider, higher, deeper. Slowly, an ascent is made to a more alert low alpha region and i am able to pay more attention to where the music is affecting me physicaly (actually, there are numerous places but i suppose one zeroes in on a particular area according to one's temperment.) I realize that this is a heart oriented piece that is also stimulating the higher chakras. The second piece, the twenty-minute "Transformation," By minute 3, i am on a steep gradient into a delta state and basically asleep before reaching minute 5. But dreaming floridly, experiencing intense visuals (and this is without chemical assistance, mind you.) A vision comes to me in a dream indicating the root area of my chronic physical pain. i am shown EXACTLY where the problem is, but realize that there is some work to do to be able to unpack it. this music is very much like Michael Hammer and i can stateconfidently that Jacotte and Michael have overlap in their work accessing the identical energies. Michael tends to be very shiny in his work; some gaseous trimmings at times but usually sheer brightness. Jacotte definitely is describing the same, but also has this intriguing dreamy, soulful aspect melded with it. These energies that they are accessing i refer to as "Ascension energies," which are aligned to the higher dimensional realms of the ascended masters and naturally on by direct route connections to Divine. i mainly point this out because there are numerous valid Divine musics. Patrick Bernhardt, for instance,through his use of sacred mantra esoterically travels established Vedic, Abrahamic or other Shamanic routes which also lead to Divine. David Parsons is an excellent exponent of Tibetan Buddhism in his music. Ascension energies i would have to say are based in the tradition of Christ. My experiences interacting with this reality lead me to believe that this is in the esoteric Spirit of the Greek Gnosis and the Christos, which is inclusive of the Jesus, but also includes many other figures representative of Sacrifice, Forgiveness and Healing. These are the Ascended Masters of the fourth sphere of the Tree of Life who are a pretty multicultural group. The basis of this knowing is the realization that we are all creatures of Love and beings of Light and that Oneness of Creative Being infuses all, making us all innately of the Universal Oneness Love Being simply called Christ. Each figure in this Celestial Holarchy is a representative, an embodiment, of a certain ability or way-of-being of Divine. I consider the music of Ascension to be markedly different from, say, the quite Catholic nature of the works of Richard Shulman or traditional liturgical singing (even though repopularizing overtone singing) of David Hykes. Even Angelic composers Raphael or Aeoliah tend to familiar themes in classical music. I should mention here the great work in ACTUAL Greek Gnosis music by Paul Avgerinos. But this Ascension Music transcends its cultural underpinnings, isn't predictable from the familiar, and gives us the freedom to notice how it is affecting us! The 10 minute third piece entitled, "Expansion," begins with an palpable wiggle in the third eye which builds into an interesting Enoesque environment that is quite distinct from the previous two pieces. by the beginning of minute 2, i'm feeling distinct SHIFTS in my head as, so it seems to me, the cranium adjusts to the sound envelope. i am also getting strong vibrations in the base chakra and the soles of my feet are tingling; soon, my entire right foot from the top of the ankle down is tingling. (later, i remember the injury 34 years ago.) my spinal column seems to be charged with an inner radiant flow thateasily passes down the length, removing small blocks in the inner cord. following this, a definite emphasis on the upper two vertebrae and it seems their relationship is harmonized. the wild thing is: this all seems so precise, yet it is obvious that i'm zeroing in on only SOME of all the effects going on in this display of coherent sound. the final minutes seem to return to a focus on the third eye itself. i am now quite alert and feeling energized. a high alpha, even possibly low beta state. then it fades.... The last piece, "Renaissance," is a third eye work-out. photonic swirling is ricocheting inside my cranium. for eternity & it feels great! by the end, my head feels clear and i seem much more focused in my attention and more Present. I found this recording to be a profound energetic experience. On repeated listen, completely new aspects keep leaping out with each listen. if i close my eyes, i get recognizable Visions. i've been sleeping more deeply and my dream life has become more active. more on THAT later! if i was to try to qualify it, i would say this disc is about being OPEN TO CHANGE. I am always looking for music of Spiritual Essence. it is one of my fundamental motives for being so involved in Visionary Sound Arts. to my mind, the artists who actually achieve this are rare and of the highest order of expression in Sound. Music is the Language of Emotion. it is our way of communicating states of Being that one could possibly be in if one CHOSE to Feel that way. (and why not? since it feels great!) among these artists, of whom *imho* Michael Hammer, Patrick Bernhardt, Iasos and Jeffrey S. Thompson are signature exponents, i believe we must include Jacotte Chollet (and this after hearing only 2 of the 10 cds!) My main recommendation is that if you are going to buy one of these discs, you may as well buy the set, because you are going to want all of them. ....i'm just sayin'..... Invisible Presence Jacotte Chollet Click for Multidimensional Music dot com AN INCREDIBLE LOW THETA JOURNEY INTO THE HEART FOR A MEETING WITH THE SOLAR LOGOS! The way this review works is i'm writing my impressions and memories during the 4th listen The 16 minute, "Transfert," begins with a TangerineDream-like bassynth pattern that has a Kraftwerk-style production but is slow and steady trance-inducing. Periodic cosmic whooshes seem to suggest movement through a long tunnel or stargate pathway. The dark, nearly sinister, atmosphere suggests an approach toward something that can be felt to be powerful, yet so nebulous as to inspire dread or at least trepidation. I've had similar feelings whenever approaching my own personal shadow material or strongly repressed material. At the beginning, one appears to be moving forward and up, but by minute 4, a pronounced sinking feeling is provided by mid-range descending riffs, melodic declensions. This brings us down into a comfortable transic state. If i recall correctly, the soles of my feet began tingling in this piece and did so well into the next piece before my attention moved to the higher chakras. This is a piece that would be great late night listening. The headspace is mid-theta: spacey but not forcing liminal awareness. The affects seems to be in the upper body - clarifying, relaxing, but also towards the end suggesting work being done. The 11 minute, "Evocation," begins with revolving patterns in the heart and head, with a piano plunking out a simple single note melody which taps the top of the cranium, particularly just above the forehead. An interesting chorale effect is also present which i fancied on the first listen was influenced by a Roman canticle. The voices are not saying anything that can be definitively made out, so they invite one's mind to impose semantic meaning. Given the cues from the style of cant, my mind was hearing the phrases "sacred jesus" and "thank you jesus." Since this song is "Evocation," i allowed the idea that this is a call for the presence of Iesous (and not "cheezwiz," which i was also able to hear.) Allowing this enabled me to connect strongly with the Iesous of my previous life experience. The 12 minute, "Solar Lord," is quite slow and stately, with a bass pulse in the heart chakra every five secs or so. A synth drone and some phasing provide a sacred tamboura-like atmosphere. A synth lead sinuously winds through the piece like an harmonium and some harp trills aesthetically placed suggest some playfulness. Overall, the piece is quite still and meditative, easily taking the listener down into low-theta. This piece took me deeply into the center of my heart, where a star was shining, and the reverberations caused my third eye to open wide. The synchronistic thing about this composition was that a couple of minutes into the piece, during my first ever listen to it, my CD player suddenly TURNED OFF! This was to be the first of numerous strange technical things that have been happening in this apartment since i started working with multidimensional music. The player had never done this before and i was in a completely darkened room and so had no direct way of knowing if the circuit breaker had been flipped or not (although i think not, because my cable TV box was still showing the correct time and not rebooting. i suppose that they could be on different circuits, but it doesn't seem likely.) The title song, "Invisible Presence," is a 20 minute offering of extremely well done space music on a par with Jonn Serrie's planetarium music. I could use this piece in a set that also had recordings of actual interplanetary space: it provides a feeling of cosmic vastness while still apparently centered in the heart. "Invisible Presence" is about reconnecting to the Higher Self in a more conscious way. While, as i've mentioned, the works seems to have affinities with Christ, it is not overtly so and i think is sufficiently accessible to transcend relgious boundaries. As an experienced sound explorer, i can state that Jacotte's music is pretty tradition-transparent compared to many other artists in the genre. This album seemed to me to be in the delta/ theta frequency ranges, very relaxing and not alert, easy to slip into slumber. As a side note, after my first listen, i was making a cup of tea and musing over what i had just heard. I was reminiscing about what a friend had said some years ago -- "The essence of the psyche- delic experience is the nervous system realizing that is is a part of something greater" -- when suddenly the alarm on my stove started beeping. In order to set the alarm, you have to push in and turn. Obviously, I must have brushed against it, but in all my years in this apartment, i don't recall having done that before! ...and the timing was too perfect.... Unite Jacotte Chollet Multidimensional Music, 1996 THIS 2CD SET CONTAINS THE MOST SUBLIMELY MYSTERIOUS AURAL SCULPTURE IN CHOLLET'S CANON It is extremely relaxing and is a long sustained delta sleep voyage healing the listener back to the wholeness and oneness of all being. I fell asleep during the first 3 listens of both respective disc: a total of SIX passouts! Couldn't even stay awake when i was TRYING to. After these 6 listens, i could not differentiate the compositions in my mind or memories. It all ran together. In order to write the following descriptions, i had to listen to the recordings upon arising from my night's sleep and write my impressions down immediately. even these sessions had to be repeated over a number of days, faithfully in the morning. In the waking state, one has a physical body; when asleep, and dreaming, one has a dreambody or "subtle" body; in dreamless sleep, one enters into a formless state, the "causal" body, in which their is only an infinite Vastness of pure nonconscious awareness. The Vedics called this reality "Alaya" and said that in deep dreamless sleep we are closest to our true nature -- the pure awareness of the Alaya -- and in simple natural bliss. This reality has been given many names i think: the Qabalistic "Ain Soph," the Buddhist "Svavabhavikhaya" and the Western concept of the "Great Void," an Immense Emptiness of Absolute Potential from which all form (or rather the experience of form) arises as the "Oneness." This is Unity in its penultimate sense. This album provides the listener with an opportunity to touch and to remember touching the Oneness. L'Amour Roi (Love Rules) Unite, Volume 1 Jacotte Chollet, 1996 INTENDED AS AN OPPORTUNITY TO EXPERIENCE SOME OF THE DIFFERENT QUALITIES OF COSMIC LOVE, this disc seems to me to mainly be helping one to receive love and to sustain a "love- circuit" if you will, with another loving being. it may also help decrystallize rigid monological ideas of what Love is or can be. I wanted to describe the opening 8 minute piece, "Soul Search," with the word QUIZZICAL. it is like the album opens with many questions hoping for answers. This is a deeply soulful piece that is pretty unique, reminding of some of the querlous moments Mourashkin or Wendy Carlos have recorded. There seems to be an underlying classical music (Russian?) influence. As the track continues, the questioning does become more of a search, but it is slow and methodical. The head space is low theta, taking the listener into a transic state hovering above slumber. While this is electronic music non pareil, the atmosphere resembles a classic "sombre" Ambience. Rising up from the depths with the next piece, "Energy," (about 10 & half minutes,) we emerge into an unearthly upward-flowing liquid environment populated by a pixie-like species of tryptaminElves. As these psidelic gnomes are wont to do, they begn their particular task, which in this cae appears to be lots of hammering with these magical hammers that change size on the downstroke to emit the correct pitch on the strike. They are hammering on the listener of course! It feels great! Each hammer strike causs a little bubble in the energybody to expand to its optimum dimension with new energy from outside the system filling it up. "Hypnotic" is a short five minute grotto- like interlude between 2 longer songs. It is an interesting bit of dark ambient with subterranean undertones which gives the listener a refreshing pause to recoup from the hammering. The eleven minute, "Osmose," is a Marcey-like piece. There is a slowly oozing sensation going into deep theta with long delay echoes of harp plucks in the general upper body and head. One is lulled into a waking state. I found towards the end of this piece that there was a palpably WARM sensation around the base of my head and upper neck as if it was being cradled by loving hands. Another five minute piece, "Healing Love," is a flowery, sweet heart chakra piece that begins with a pleasant shimmering in the mid and upper chest that melts into a feeling of fulfillment and resolve. "Love Rules," the 16 minute title song, expands from the previous piece into feelings of Hope, Devotion and Anticipation. Mystere De La Vie (The Mystery Of Life) Unite, Volume 2 Jacotte Chollet MultiDimensional Music, 1996 This disc begins with the 7 minute, "Chronos," which is a classic electronic track. Shafts of golden light ray out from the indigo abyss. A third eye opener clearly intended to induce a transic mind flow. Chronos, or Chronus, is the God of Time. The only thing male about Chronos, in my opinion, is the fact that he is male. All of his qualities and related symbols are goddess images borrowed from preexisting feminine deities. I'm getting a visual of an ultraviolet toroid, reminding me of the sphere of Saturn, Binah, in Qabala, which is the Great Mother. This song is very yin but the outflow from it is yang. "Valhalla" is fourteen and a half beautiful minutes of deeply restful delta peace. Now i know why i couldn't stay awake. The Valhalla of Scandinavian mythology is one of the heavenly realms in the greater heaven named Asgard. It is a great hall in which Odin lives with spirits of warriors who have fallen in glory. Their heavenly pursuits are combat all day followed by a miraculous healing of their wounds. At night, they enjoy a wondrous feast featuring an inexhaustable supply of mead. The composition is very architectural, using sequencing to develop visions of pillars and geodesic much like Michael Hammer does. I think, however, that the emphasis here is on the endless supply of Divine Nectar. The third piece, "Sanctuary," is also around 15 minutes. It has a strong glimmer moving in the alpha range of about 8 hertz or so, with a one hertz delta puls. As i recall, after nearly 15 minutes of slumber in Valhalla, one pretty much gloms onto the delta pulse, but there seems to be this high speed dream happening overhead. The pulse and glimmer are in the throat and most of the energic activity is in the neck and head. There is also a hint of anxiety and wariness at the beginning, which speeds up to a feeling of peace and euporia. The tempo increases again and there is a feeling of energizing and power. A rustling takes form as if a shaman were sweeping one with a rattle and fan. Yes, the last half of this song seems to be a healing ritual performed in protective secrecy. Interesting one here....*raised eyebrow*....An increasing emphasis on the rattle slows things back down to a dreamy theta by the end of the piece. The title song, "Mystery Of Life," is para- doxical in the way that certain Iasos songs get a little confusing and one beings to feel that they are losing the plot or the thread of the story. I think it might be the use of breathy woodwinds with lots of echo. So much is going on that it is hard to keep track of the originating voice. There is also a meandering melody which gives one the feeling of following an unfamiliar path or trail....After ten minutes of that, it is as if we have reached our underground burrow and there is a warm feeling of Home. Soon, this is followed by whatever the interiorized behavior of a subterranean creature is....i was getting flashes of insect nests and such. The composition allows life to remain a Mystery as the album closes with the lifeform...in its home...nesting... Creation Jacotte Chollet MultiDimensional Music, 2000 ACTIVATING ALPHAWAVE ANGELIC ARCHITECSONIQUES!! What a truly amazing and satisfying recording this is!! i would think anybody with a love and appreciation for Angelic or Ascension music would really enjoy this album which to me is the orange sister album to Solaris Universalis and Atlantis Angelis by Patrick Bernahardt (both of said albums being well suited to the color of their respective album covers, as this is to its mellow light orange. i swear my toes were curling by the second minute of the second song & the rest was a feast for the senses. the album begins in a classical angelic mode, the moves into quite inspired Space Music somewhere between Constance Demby at her best and Jonn Serrie, the well known planetarium music electronic composer. i have a theory: *ahem* ... the first four discs of this 10 disc series basically "NAIL" you. you are basically diaGNOSISed, the ReSet button gets hit & then you get retemplated to a healthy waveform. Unconscious terror can erupt in the return of memories or atavisms thereof not limited simply to dream Visions but also physical affects and mood swings. i myself had an eruption of disturbance between me & my downstairs neighbors. it was like he couldn't stand subliminally feeling the vibes i was giving off and he was slamming the door and throwing stuff around. as soon as i got to "Creation," it resolved itself (i think...) so the resurgences can also be events in one's life. anyway, the first 4 albums are a RESET and this is really the first fully alpha state album where you can actually clearly focus on the soundwave information being conveyed. you've heard of "Biofeedback?" well, this is BIOFEED. that is to say: describing states of vibration that you or i could be in and, hence, the general mental states associated with that frequency range. a lot of biofeed is also about learning how energy in one's own bioenergic envelope moves and can be moved. The name of the album is CREATION, and that is indeed what it is about. feeling creative, thinking creatively and creating realities. so it is quite active and energizing, while at the same time being very suggestive on a visual level. The initial piece, "Heaven," is a playful 7 minute improv on some ideas that are signature Debussy and exemplared in his, "Prelude To An Afternoon Of A Faun" Both Iasos and Maui's Raphael, penultimate Angelic maestros, have explored the atmospheres in these impressionistic phrases which pretty much, the rest of his canon aside, demonstrate that Debussy was in touch with something greater and Beyond. It conjures images of natural Paradise with animal innocence, yet it is also magical and mysterious, suggestive of something evanescent of a higher reality being miraculously translated downward to a denser reality. Jacotte's work is is a real pleasure to listen to and has that dreamy Marcey-like zinginess that really attracts me to her music. This piece sets the tone for the rest of the album. Clearly, a mid-alpha vibe, the listener finds it easy to remain alert and notice shifts in energy. "Magical" is an 8 minute tour de force of angelic DARK ambient!! This was about the time i started being delighted with this album. This song is deep, dark and mysterious, yet has what i originally described, in the best possible way, as a "goofy" quality. like being in a dream where things aren't quite making sense, although one knows that they are, but on the face of it the people are acting kind of "goofy." The feeling is like what one might have if one was realizing that ANYTHING could happen. It is like intuitive choosing of specific states from an ocean of potential. This mellows into a quixotic rearchitecturalization of the chosen states by means of subtle will into the web of real events....er, that's what i got out of it anyway....it reminds of that time in the wee hours of the morning when the Veil is thinnest.... The ten minute, "Oratorio," takes us to the Sea of Light. while i could name many artists who have Voyaged these realms, Jacotte swathes it with angelic crystalline moments reminding me in particular of Raphael's fantastic album, "Angels Of The Deep," or in some ways the "Sea Of Glass" from Giles Reaves. However, again, this is somewhere between Demby & Serrie. and a marvelous production in the same league too! The oceanic flow soon becomes gaseous, with a pronounced throat chakra brainwave pulse in the alpha range. Hey!: i'm wide awake for this album!! About halfway through, an emphasis on the heart (and, thus, speaking with the heart) occurs and this leads into a healing fugue that slows down into a midtheta trance. This entire sequence is so well arranged and executed, i'm pretty much in awe by the end. "Condor Flight" pulls us back up into relaxed but alert alpha for a soaring journey into a MichaelHammeresque environment, which suggests flight over terrestrial peaks at first but soon leaves even the clouds for gaseous Aethyric realms traversed mostly by extreme intuitives like Hammer or by dedicated mystik craftspeople like Tibetan innerscapes composer David Parsons. The last third of this 10 minute piece, changes to a feeling of discovery as if we have spotted our home roost, primal Nest. We are returning to a familiar place, yet there is a feeling of revelation and wonder as if we'd been gone so long we'd forgotten. And a sense of being welcomed back.... The fifth track, "Cosmic Love," begins like the "bliss music" of Kip Mazuy. There is an intense sensation of deep love and i check my heart chakra only to realize -- !! -- this is in the crown chakra and i'm about to go over the falls into ekstasy!! o man!! and there's 12 minutes of this?? tremulously hovering on the brink of Divine Chaos, shivering with the ambrosial thrills of a white Light that infuses the room, dancing on the skin like the touch of goddesses. this softens and begins to swirl. the Ocean of Milk, i call it, the Bliss of Pure Ananda, the Nectar of Joy. seated on the Lily pad of the Lotus, meditating on the Secrets, dining on the delicacies of the Divine. then in the last two minutes, the Return from that throne of elevated awareness to the Body so nourished and tranquil, remembering Home. and back in alpha by the end (just in time for tea!) The final piece, "Space Song," is 17 minutes beyond the threshold in a paradoxical realm that the inner voice says is where Will originates. This is not simple galactic or transgalactic space. This is more like the Pleroma or the Logos:Void of Absolute Potential. This space is crackling with power and Action. This is like a transrational Will operating in a way that these bodies were not DESIGNED to understand. Or, put another way, this is like the Hyperspace of the Imagination, a realm outside of simple space, yet interior to it also, filling it up from behind so to speak, with a gazillion new forms and vibrations bursting forth from it every millimicromoment. then sensation is like travelling outward to the ends of the IS, only to find oneself diving deeper into a reality that can't be communicated adequately. but, it would seem, music does a better job than words... While "Creation" is immediately my favorite disc of the set, for sheer exuberance and strong positivity, getting NAILED by the first four albums gave me a strong vibratory basis for synching into this one without overly dramatic abreactions. i mentioned Bernhardt's classic first two albums in comparison with this one and i think that is a fair statement. for me, this really resonates into my Atlantean and Lemurian background realities and expands me as a person in my understandings of Ascension. MUST HAVE album for those who love angelic synthesis!! Silent Light Jacotte Chollet MultiDimensional Music, 2000 SWEETEST AND MOST LOVELY SLEEP DISC I OWN This is a long drink of lavendar nectar to be sure! Nourishing and comforting. Like slumbering in a bed of fragrant flowers. After the very intense tribulations of the first 3 albums, getting a lot of confused energy flushed out and such, and then the magnificence of the CREATION disc, this is a welcome experience of gentle, tender caring and unconditional nurture. The one real abreaction i had during this disc was that i had vivid dream visions in the slumber. These dreams were nearly lucid and vibrant. No, i had not taken any drugs to cause this. The album opens with "Silent Light," a savory 15 minute theta journey to the Bright World. On the wing of Prayer, we sail through the glassy sheets of Light to the Heart of an ever-arriving Dawn. A gentle, healing, nourishing swathe of the Unio Mysterium. The last few minutes slow to high delta and the urge to fully relax and close the eyes is quite strong. The music evokes a yawn response. By the end of the piece, I'm usually govering on the edge of sleep. "Awakening" is a 13 minute piece that lures one from the precipice of slumber into an active dreaming somnolence -- the paradoxical "mind awake; body asleep" state. It seems to me that the information being conveyed here is an extension from some of that on the CREATION album. The information on conscious creation on that album is recast here as a complimentary "Unconscious Creation," if you will. In magical terms, conscious creation is "Making," whereas unconscious creation is "Allowing." So, this creative process occuring at the borderline of dreams is described in a song named "Awakening." Perhaps it is part of one's awakening to be more interactive with one's unconscious creative processes. After this, "Soul Memory" an 8 minute Ambient piece, evokes a quiet, solitary mood appropriate to the state we refer to as Reflection: an extended introspective consideration of a matter or of an idea (according to me.) This composition serves as a bridge, as a calming period between sections of the album. It allows the slumberer a little time to absorb the previous material, get centered and develop a clean dominant brainwave for what follows. Which is the epic 22 minute "Tao," which is a wonderful delta environment. Even though it is slow and sleep music, there is a lot of energy and goings-on here! Processed bells create a holy chamber atmosphere while also being pitch bent out of all creation into slippery zingers in a Marcey-like "Z" fashion that was my original attraction to Jacotte's work. This piece operates well outside the box of standard listening experience and probably shouldn't be played at your workplace. Its' sound is oblique, weird, yet it is really well done and a delicious intrigue. If you listen to this on an entheogen, there is NO WAY you'll be able to get the house stretched back into shape by the time your housemates get home! Probably the gentlest and most lovely of the MultiDimensional music set, I love to go to sleep to this one. sweet like honey. Sky Dancing Jacotte Chollet MultidimensionalMusic, 2000. UNIQUE ULTRAMYSTERIOSO UNDULATING EUPHONY After 2 very joyous and relaxing albums, the theme of Discovery and spiritual devlopment is rejoined in SKY DANCING. i felt like i'd been to classes on personal power as creativity and on how to receive nurture and unconditional Love, and now was going to learn about responsibility: the ability to respond, to see the work before one which needs to be done and to engage it and transform it. This is one of the most difficult albums by Jacotte for me to describe because its quality is SO unique. "Crystal Tone" is a 9 minute piece which begins this inner plane Flight with bell-like tones reverberating through some delayed echo and weaving around sinuous synth drones. this was the first piece where i was remembering the title of the song and thinking, "yeah, i want to hear that again." by this time in the series, it was easier to pay attention since i wasn't experiencing any abreaction in my energy. this shorter piece is a low-to-mid alpha introduction to the environment on this disc, which is sort of a culmination of the previous two and introduces a higher vibration which is articulated through the rest of the series. The 20 minute "Divine Saga" uses the harmonic interval of the 5th to great advantage, focusing on the relationships of navel to throat chakra and of solar plexus to third eye, i believe. this seems to bring up material regarding sexuality, dominance and competition. a dolphin-like voice in the head seems to create a situation of hovering above the sea of this material and viewing it. so there is this feeling of Flight in the form of Hovering and Watching. the Saga, apparently, being the ostensible procession of images of the use of energy and power. In the next piece, entitled, "Angel Choir," a noticeable spiral spin begins to occur in this Hovering process. a remarkable emotional milieu begins to unfold, which i can only describe in paltry terms as the wonder of the beauty of otherworldly extradimensional phenomena, the sense of "strange beauty" as it is sometimes called, in an admixture of apprehension (the trepdiation that comes from not knowing what will happen next) along with a sense of discovery. The title track is about 10 minutes of Ascent, where Divine Nectar is also descending from the higher realms Beyond the summit. After a few minutes, we alight upon the head of the pin, so to speak, and are surrounded by an incandescent, rarefied atmosphere, filled with geometric lattice lacings that are at once crystalline and electromagnetic. we are so Light we can float in the medium. it is dancing all around us. the sky is dancing. the heavenly vault within. amazing. slowly it all begins to flow and become an ocean of nectar that we are drifting through.... The 12 minute, "Infinity," finds gliding down the endless mirrored Tunnel of Light, with the bright Gleaming of the pinnacle of Flight beaming from the end up ahead to us. we are flying. flying into the Eternal Oneness beyond the neverending. This album completes a trilogy released at the millenium. I currently consider it to be a release point heralding the next three albums, all of which extend from the trilogy. This is why we got into electronic music in the first place. Aces. High Spaces Jacotte Chollet MMD Productions, 2002 SONIC QUANTUUM LEAP PROVIDES FRESH CHALLENGES you may have noticed that while i was experiencing definite abreactions when initially listening to MultiDimensional Music, i travelled through the last 3 - - Creation, Silent Light, and Sky Dancing -- with little in the way of bizarre energy tweaking, emotional leakage or synchronistic oddities. i'd actually been feeling a little proud of myself, "experienced sound explorer" that i fancy myself to be. i thought i'd made some adjustments and was now learning new materials, but that i had surmounted most of the disharmonies in my personal energic field. uh...not quite... the three compositions on this release are "Spheres" or vibratory fields of living information. the first "Sphere of Love" is 20 minutes of intense synthesis which is loving, but not in the safe happy angelic way one thinks of heavenly love. this is deeply transormative vibrational biofeed of spiritual essence. it makes me think of when i, as a baby, would get my diaper changed by my mother. now, i might not particularly WANT to go for the diaper change right at this moment, and my mother was trying to be as gentle and loving as possible BUT the diaper change was GOING to happen (know what i mean?) okay: this is like a metaphysical diaper change. around half way through, my spine suddenly arched and my lumbar and lower thoracic vertebrae all crunched into a new alignment. only rarely have i ever experienced such a full scale vertebral realignment and NEVER while neither being worked on by a therapist nor actively stretching or exercising. this happened while i lay prone meditating. suddenly the spine arched and the vertebrae realigned. afterwards, there was some additional crunching as the calcium deposits that build up from misalignment were worn away. during the last 5 minutes of this piece, it felt like smart cards of neuroinformation were being inserted into my vertebrae. all i can say is that these affects appeared to happen all on their own, there was no conscious decision: it was almost like someone had "cracked" my back for me. the second piece, "Sphere of Origins" is 13 minutes seemed to draw me down and further inside my energy to a place where bioenergy seemed to appear ex nihilo (out of nothing.) i then noticed that i was somewhere inside my cranium. i was aware of the tension in my skull and it was being "frothed" away by some arcane process whispering in my ear. it was almost like having had cotton in one's ear, but someone puts some hydrogen peroxide in there and the bubbles clean it out. i wondered if i had put the blockages there in order to not be aware of the inner voices. at the mid-point of the piece, i then found myself focusing on my heart chakra and the voices there. a melting sensation then set in and i found myself yawning and becoming very relaxed as if about to fall asleep. i figured i might be trying to sleep as a way of not being immediately aware of the information. for a few moments, i did seem to nod off and had a short fantasy about being arrested (which i've never been and, so, theoried that i was arrested in some kind of personal developmental line.) just as i reached this conclusion, the piece faded out. the last piece, "Sphere Of Evolution," is 26 spectacular minutes of exotic divine synthesis on par with David Parsons' most sublime Tibetan astral travels. i don't think i can describe this piece adequately. lots of incandescent gas in a realm completely off the human scale with gigantic structures that seem to instigate fundamental transfigurations. i don't see any processes which create orderly progression but rather transdimensional metamorphoses from which "order" appears to be occuring from natural settling rather than active selection. everything seems to fit into place, looking at it from this angle....and then i'm fitting into place as it were, moulding into a perfect fit with the overall structure. i want to drift into it and slumber....it is like there is an avalanche of information that my conscious mind can't grasp, it wants to get out of the way and let the unconscious processes integrate it. the final 8 minutes are so mysterious - they must be analogues of the selection process - but i seem to be in the Spell of Nature. it is not a feeling of doom, but a feeling of cosmic gravity quite profound and necessary. i'm struggling to stay awake, to get a peek through the door....to pierce this dark machinery of change and see through to the radiance and brilliance i know is there....i'm dancing around a fire with other tribe members; there is fire and the surrounding darkness.... tall reeds lit by the moon and the flicker of the firelight....we are dancing the change awake My current theory is that this album is dedicated to the titanic forces of Transformation. My own lack of clarity shows up in the abreactions i was experiencing, particularly the intense sleepiness and the incoherence evident in my attempt to describe what i was hearing. What i CAN tell you is that this disc is loaded with spiritual information on a very high level which is about, basically, how everything changes but Change itself, and none of us are exempt from inevitable transfigurations of our own being. Inspiration Jacotte Chollet MMD Productions,2007 ASTONISHING AUDIO PERMUTATIONS REVEAL WONDERS OF CREATIVITY AND FULFILLMENT nearing completion of our odyssey through these unique soundworlds of multidimensional music, we encounter this just-released double disc delight. while the set is entitled, "Inspiration," it is fair to point out that the first disc has that title, while the second is "Ascension." this review covers the first one. while new CDs continue to accrete around me as if i were some strange attractor, i must admit that my main focus has been in this set, so i really have a backlog of regular discs begging for my attention. but i can't help it! this stuff is so delicious. i bet if you went through all my reviews you would find at most one usage of the phrase "ear candy," and that would be appropriate since i would have been unconsciously saving it for Multidimensional Music. not that it is all that sugary, syrupy or in any case pabulum or, as i've been known to jest "sonic velveeta." no: it is just that once one grasps the vibe of what is happening you are simply drawn back to it again & again. not addictively, as one might guess, but like bees to nectar. you feel nourished by something intrinsically healthy. while there are numerous artists that do this -- Hammer, Bernhardt and Mazuy immediately come to mind -- what i really like about this is that while been radically beautiful, it is also relatively situation neutral. it is as much amenable to stillness as to movement, without relying on rockbeats or drumming to engage activity. "Inspiration," is a great example of this. first of all, it is nontemporal in the sense that it is great for mornings, high noon, afternoon, evening and late night. it really is timeless compared to much music of this nature. secondly, while seeming to be relatively simple in its construction, the more you listen the more there is to listen to. remarkable. and while it is titled "Inspiration," i almost think the title, "Mastery," would be appropriate. The opening piece, "Ballade Spherique," is a curious four minutes of classically-based synthwinds which are "twiddling" in such a way as to create a quixotic or quizzical (?) mood, which is searching yet playful. Jacotte has several short pieces of this nature which create an emotional atmosphere without using any cliched phrasing to telegraph what, exactly, the mood being described actually is. One finds oneself simultaneously focusing attention on trying to determine what mood or emotion is being described while also being bemused by its apparent casual humor. Following this, the nine&half minute "Golden Light" is a beautiful heavenly environment similar in color and flavor to a favorite Raphael track of mine, "Like An Endless River" (from the album of the same name.) A sonic spiral seeming to glide effortlessly through a tunnel of Light towards the outer climes of Infinity. There is golden Light here, along with a deep royal purple infused Light. We sail in curves, swathed in diaphanous streamers of incandescence. The feeling is deeply satisfying. This would be an immediate pick for radio airplay. The title song is immediately more oceanic, but the substance we are floating in is slippery like mercury. The deep purple slowly lightens up to a pastel and there is silvery-grey Light throughout; not metallic, but almost a finely granular crystalline mist that is evenly dispersed. This mist becomes a bright silver and brilliant Light begins peeking through here and there. Then we are really in liquid mercury, the curls of which are filamented with the Light Divine, bathing in an occult intelligence. Glimmers of nascent ideas dart about. "Gratitude" is a fourteen&half minute journey down into the inner recesses of the Unconscious. The shimmering Void reveals itself to be an energetic plenum of absolute potential brimming over with never-ending, ever new galaxies of conceptual form. Like a transuniversal womb continually birthing new children, it is continually opening to greater depths which are ultimate heights at the same time. We discover our own nativity in this Vastness deeper than space which is simultaneously within us and coursing through us. It becomes clear that WE are the nascent ideas, the stars of forever, and there is a feeling of knowing we are Home and always welcome. The epic final piece, "Soma," immediately conveys a devotional temperment. A sky full of newborn stars winking into existence like one lightbulb after another popping on above our heads. A gentle love swirls throughout, caressing our soul and reminding us of the continuous support and aid which is each of our birthright and freely given to us from each moment to the next as we journey through these lifetimes of co-creativity and struggle to achieve the dream of love without end in this realm of beginnings and endings. There is a feeling of having come full circle, of reaching the mountain top and finding ourself already there. it is triumph, homecoming and release all at once. i write these words to try to describe my impressions of music that is really beyond language and truly from the Beyond. however cleverly i might seem to be doing this, it always seems to me that my attempts are partial to my own meager ability to sense these things and in this way i only convey one aspect of a glittering jewel that always has one more side to it. Ascension Jacotte Chollet MMD Productions, 2007 CULMINATING MASTER STROKE ALBUM When one thinks of what an album entitled, "Ascension," would sound like, it seems natural to assume that it will be light and airy, with flutes and harps, moving into ever more rarefied atmospheres of rainbows, aethyric faerie mysts, and aurora borealises supreme. The 4-disc set, "Music For Ascension" by Michael Hammer, the "Ascension Harmonics" album by Richard Shulman and Samuel Welsh, the classic albums, "Novus Magnificat" and "Aeterna" by Constance Demby (perhaps the primary spirit music composer associated with the Ascension mysteries, and, yes, i will throw in the Yes album, "Keys To Ascension" (i'm actually referring to the studio recordings of that release which were later compiled as the horribly named release, "Yestudio," which is, as far as i'm concerned, the ACTUAL "Keys To Ascension,")all have in common an unabashed positivity and Light- orientation in which Darkness and Shadow are completely preempted in a glorious Vision of the Triumph of Light. (i admit that Hammer DOES have a piece in the afore-mentioned set entitled, "Within The Void," but it is a Void brimming over with Light and Manifestation.) i'm reminded of the extremely bright recordings by Elizabeth Claire Prophet, who turned out to have a rather disconcerting dark side. This is why it is so remarkable to come upon an "Ascension" album which uses a different symbolic language, one which is rooted in a quantuum consciousnes in distinction to the previously mentioned mythic modalities which involve galactic, inner aethyric planes or tribal family concepts and metaphors. From the titles of the compositions to the mood of the pieces themselves, we are drawn into a mysterious realm where there is cleansing and transformation occuring continuously at radically minute levels. This album, to me, is not about the Victory of Light over Shadow, where the darkness is obliterate or simply aesthetic counterpoint; no, this about bringing Shadow to the Light of awareness, infusing Light into Shadow, transmuting Shadow to Light. Rather than a final victory, we are exposed to an on-going ultimate process of transmutation and metamorphosis. The eight minute, "Vortex," begins with what seemed like the nesting behavior of some gargantuan primordial avian, perhaps the sunbird. This splicing together of the threads of the nest becomes the whorl of the golden section spiral, a toroidal whirlpool that enlarges to a darkening galaxy-sized object within which we are being drawn down and forward by means more tidal than suctional. This is a very pleasant gliding down and in, which ends in a moment of arrival and focus, before we finds ourselves suspended in a sea of stars. "Plasma" is a 15-minute sonic silly putty. The starry firmament begins to expand in an elastic way in which everything is moving away from everything else. There is again this feeling of being "stretched out," as if prone on the surface of a balloon which is being blown up. i would call this medium liquid starlight except elasticity is much more emphasized than laminar flow. i usually think of the plasma in outer space as being incandescent fluid electro- magnetism, like liquid lava only completely energy. For the first time, i am wondering if this might be some stellar substance analogous to our blood plasma. There is Light here, but it is more like finely granulated fluid jewels rather than glowing hot molecular gas clouds. There is a sense of one's bodily mass being replotted and slightly expanded to better match up with the corresponding holon template coordinates. A peaceful, immense ocean of slowly undulating liquid light. Things become even darker and more Void-like in the nine and a half minute, "Ether." We are first taken deeper down into starless space with possibly some molecular clouds in the distance. There is much less Light here. We seem to have passed inside of a membrane to a more secluded area. We are moving forward to an area where there is activity. This activity is coded at the third eye and the crown chakra, so it is hard for me to describe it. These are shadowy move- ments occuring across a vast area, but whatever is producing the movements can only be seen in fragments. What can be seen is movement that is familiar to all different forms of animal -- insectoid, amphibian, reptilian, mammalian, avian and so forth -- yet one cannot piece them together into coherent bodies. It is more like they are embodied processes. This area is quite dark and only outlines can be made out. i'm thinking we're in the Unconscious looking at processes being worked out. Suddenly, there is a cohesive movement and it seems the entire scene is coalesced into a single large crystal tone resonating in the Heart. The 16 minute title song, "Ascension," then follows. In the previous music descriptions, i have not mentioned the presiding emotional characteristics of my listening experiences with this album, of which this song is the exemplar: feelings of Mystery & Unknowing, joined with Discovery & Awe and some - a little bit - of Trepidation at moving through spaces so clearly off of the human scale. This piece is revelatory. Now what was occluded is revealed. In this wise, it could be an audience with the Divine, or a return to awareness of repressed Shadow material (i got a healthy jolt of the latter.) I kid you not. Like a sonic "purge" button, that blows out the ballast, this song rather describes an Unveiling process in which even the Veil is of a purpose. "Cosmic Power," the 12 minute concluding piece, is the gentle infusion of the Light of the occluded One. This is done in a subtle, understated way in which Light is slowly influxed into one's energy-body (reminding me of the indirect golden light of the temples of magian traditions.) The emphasis is clearly on the miraculous healing power of the One Light, in contrast to the typical "ecstasy of brilliance" one encounters in Ascension musics, where one attains the pinnacle of the spiritual mount or summit, dazzled and ravished by the intensity of pure divine Light. Instead, this is a teaching on ALLOWING Light to influx gently into one's personal form, to fill the vessel with a radiance commensurate with the vessel's current adaptation abilities to comfortably manage the Light. SO, my experience of this album is that it is clearly NOT the typical Ascension angelic motif of travelling upwards to the aethyric climes of Light, but it is rather a subquantum journey deep into the universal unconscious, where we encounter our Shadow and the One which is occluded by its umbra. This album, then, uses metaphors of bringing radiance up from deep within in order to emanate within our ordinary realities. It is also about encountering Shadow material and resolving it gifting it, infusing it with Light. As the culmination of the entire series, "Ascension," quite excellently summarizes and crystallizes the lessons of all of the multidimensional music releases, giving them a node point around which they constellate nonlinearly. Return To DarvReviews page Return to Reviews Page Return to Main Page